Clearly, you guys love to post to the Flickr Group. And I love to see your work! But, I am quite behind given the number of photos posted in the last 2 months and a bit of a freak amount of work in my day job in April.

This month, your challenge is… well, no challenge! For May, it’s a free for all! Post up to 3 photos of food shots you want to show. Anything you want!

However, I’m going to skip commenting this month. If you really want me to comment, please tag the photo “STWFeedbackPlease” and I’ll be sure to take a look and give you some feedback.

I’m also asking for help in future months. If you have an idea for a challenge, shoot me a piece of email and let me hear your suggestions! Or post ideas on the Future Theme Ideas thread. If you think you have time to help give feedback, let me know too. Of course everyone is welcome and encouraged to leave feedback on the photos in the group. The more we all get involved, the better.

Have you ever noticed little bits on your photos? Not the little crumbs from a cookie that help make the photo more real looking. But, little indiscernible dots or smudges or blobs that appear, usually if you are shooting something on a solid white background. That’s dust. And, if you are using a dSLR, you probably have some on your sensor.

Here’s a quick way to tell. Close down your aperture as far as you can… probably somewhere around 22. Then take a properly exposed photo of something white. Any dust that is on your sensor is going to show up, and look something like this:

The first image is at 100%. You can see two little light grey spots within the red highlighted area. The second box (below) is that red box zoomed in even further. If you look closely in the first box, right by the right edge, you’ll see another dust bunny… a little squiggly do like thing. These little specks will appear in the same place on every single photo I take. Now how annoying is that?

The good news is that there are many ways to fix this problem. First off, if there are just one or two spots, the clone brush in Photoshop or the spot healer in Lightroom will make quick work of them. The only time they are really noticeable (if they are small and light like these) is when they are on solid color backgrounds where they are also easy to fix.

If you easily get weary of the manual dusting, SensorKleen is app that can do the cleaning for you. Basically, the software analyzes a batch of photos, and tries to find the common spots… then it can clone them out automatically. I tend to go the old-fashioned way, but if anyone out there has tried it and has feedback, I’d love to hear it. I’ve also heard that the software that Nikon ships with its cameras that has a dust removal feature.

Of course, once it gets bad enough, you really do need to clean your sensor. There all manners of brushes and swabs created for this task. Personally, I’m terrified to touch the sensor on my camera. I tried to clean my view finder up one time and mucked it up… so I stay far, far away from the inner workings. Instead, I take my camera in 3 or 4 times a year to get it professionally cleaned. In Seattle, I can highly recommend CameraTechs who will clean a dSLR sensor for between $35 and $45 dollars (depending on the size… 5Ds are more than 20Ds). If you live near one of the Canon service centers in New Jersey & California, I’ve heard rumors that you can take it in there and they will clean it for no charge.

Canon has started to introduce automatic sensor cleaning to its cameras, but early results have been not so good. Olympus’s model seems to have faired better, so perhaps there is hope in the future for this technology. Until then, CameraTechs has a pretty regular customer in me.

If you’ve ever done any research into food photography and styling, then you know how few and far between the guides are. There are a couple of books that focus on lighting and some of the basics of photography when it comes to food… almost a laughable number given the overall quantities of books on general photography and photography software. For food styling, there has been even less. However, I just received my copy of Food Styling for Photographers by Linda Bellingham and Jean Ann Bybee and I’m thrilled to see this kind of information more readily available to photographers and people considering food styling.

Food Styling for Photographers does a great job of giving photographers an idea of what they may be getting themselves into if they do decide to pick up styling. Starting from the shopping trip, to prepping the table setting, to preparing some of the harder to style foods, the book is comprehensive and easy to understand. There is a fantastic section on stylists tools, including brand name suggestions on everything from griddles (Presto Tilt & Drain) to paper towels (Bounty). The vegetable chapter has a neat trick for how to fold a corn husk, and the chapter on desserts (which yes, contains the expected fake ice cream for hot lights) has a great suggestion for using toothpicks to get neat stacks of freshly baked cookies. There are also some tricks that made me giggle… like using cardboard between layers of a cake to help it keep its height, or using Soil Moist granules to make a drink that looks like a frozen margarita.

For food bloggers interested in learning more on styling, be aware that this book is aimed at people who will not be eating any of the food being prepared. There are still good tips, even a few that say “follow the recipe” to make the food look beautiful (I had to laugh at the food styling for biscuits paragraph that simply says pop them open from the can and bake them!). The most useful chapters if you want to eat the food afterwards are likely the on making a salad and on garnishing, like how to perk up the green tops on strawberries and tomatoes. That said, the authors’ number one rule is never to eat the food from the set. But, even if you don’t use any of the styling tips, there are great shots of the lighting and setup of most of the images in the book, along with photographers notes which are incredibly useful.

Technorati Tags: food styling, food photography

While I work on that… I hope you guys will get as excited about this month’s challenge… Food Travel. One of my favorite parts of traveling is seeing what all the special food stuffs are wherever I go. If you happen to be traveling right now, do share some of your secret finds. If you aren’t traveling… even better! Here’s your chance to think like a pro photographer and shoot your own town as a traveler’s destination. This is the kind of assignment I get all the time and it happens to be one of my favorites because I learn more about my own city and feel like I’ve been adventuring without all the $$. The key to this challenge is shooting on location where lighting is probably mostly out of your control. You’ll want to think about your destination and what kind of light it has and when the best time to shoot will be. Think about the types of shots you might see in Australian Gourmet Traveller or Travel & Leisure… the shots that are often the most intriguing bring a sense of the culture into them. Markets, restaurants, bars are all wonderful places to take photos. Feel free to combine two images to build the picture. Think about the color. Bring in some life. Explore somewhere new or share some of your favorite places. Most of all, have fun!

The usual rules and are up on the Flickr group… the things like be constructive, take the photos during the month if possible, 3 photos per person and the last day will be around April 30th give or take a few days.

I’m a bit late finding this, but if you haven’t seen it yet, and were curious about how the relatively inexpensive Lowel Ego Lights worked for food photos, check out Steamy Kitchen’s excellent post that shows how much difference they can make. Brilliant.

This had me rolling on the floor laughing. First, I have to say… Wow… the new design of Dairy Today magazine rivals that of Donna Hay, which is simply dumbfoundingly-wonderful of its own right. Even better, there is video of the “model” cow’s photoshoot in the post by Pentagram, the design firm.

I am so tempted to subscribe…

(Image from Pentagram)

[via How About Orange]

It sounds all so simple doesn’t it… March’s theme of Eggs. Much simpler, I suppose than last month’s self portraits with food. There were some great entries, but I wish that we had seen a bit more of everyone! I know there are times when I have to be my own model, so being able to nail focus while you work with a remote or a timer is a great skill to develop! Even if you didn’t submit anything, I encourage everyone to keep working on it!

Anyway, back to the eggs. I’ve been wanting to do a month focused on eggs for a while, but held off the start of spring which is unbelievably just around the corner. Whole eggs in the shell I think are one of the most gorgeous things to photograph. Out of the shell though, it becomes a whole new ball game… a little air on an egg and it quickly congeals, so you have to shoot fast. It’s up to you how you want to shoot the eggs this month… in the shell or out, cooked or raw, fowl or fish. But try to get creative with it. What can you do that makes your egg shots new and fresh?

The usual rules and are up on the Flickr group… the things like be constructive, take the photos during the month if possible, 3 photos per person and the last day will be around March 31st give or take a few days.

While you are out there browsing, check out this podcast from Tips from the Top Floor in which Chef Mark of the Culinary Network talks a little about how he photographs his own food.

Still Life With has had the same old theme since its inception… it’s time for a refresh! I apologize in advance because I’m going to be mucking around with the live site instead of being a responsible blogger and creating a test site. Please excuse the mess!

Just a quick post to share some news and events that I’ve stumbled upon in the past week or so:

Photoshop World, April 2-4 in Orlando, has several talks of interest to budding food photographers, including a live Still Life shoot with Jim DiVitale, Joe Glyda’s talk on the best lighting techniques for food shoots, Joe McNally giving some insights into shooting for major magazines. For more information, see the Photoshop World website.

Lighting and Food Photography by Matt Armendariz on the Aperture Forums with plenty of Matt’s gorgeous photos as examples, plus some how-to diagrams.

Shooting in a vegetable patch for Martha.

Barilla is sponsoring an “Italian Table” photo contest as part of their recent release of a downloadable celebrity cookbook. Submit your best photo of your table all decked out for a pasta feast, and you could win a goodie basket of Barilla products and be entered into a drawing for $500 gift certificate to Williams-Sonoma.